Ibérica (Apr 2006)
A genre approach to goals and their implementation applied to a TV programme for the Virginia Farming Community
Abstract
In this article we have analysed a television programme, Down Home Virginia, addressed to farmers and the general public in the state of Virginia, USA from a genre studies perspective. Down Home Virginia constitutes a mixed or hybrid genre (Bhatia, 2002) which combines news, entertainment and the promotion of agricultural products. We have centred on the diverse goals pursued in the programme and how they are implemented. We have divided the concept of goal into several separate but related notions: overt/covert and strategic/tactical. We have focused our analysis on the implementation of the goals of the programme through music and images, voices and accents, stereotypical images, and popularized specialist discourse (Calsamiglia 8 van Dijk, 2004; Myers, 2003, inter alia). Through our analysis we hope to have contributed to genre studies, especially to discovering some of the differences between specialized and popularized genres.
